2009/5/31 V? ?? Qu?nh <vu.do.quynh at auf.org>: > Hi, > > I had an agreable surprise this morning while wandering around the Thi?n > Quang lake (front of Lenin park). > > I went inside a computer shop, located at the corner of Nguyen Du and Tr?n > Binh Trong (Trung Anh computers), and saw that there were selling > self-assembled computers (Intel celeron, Intel Dual core and Core 2 Duo, > with prices ranging from 3.5 to 5.9 MVND, without monitor) and Ubuntu was > one of the three proposed OS. Windows (XP and Vista) was the other OS but > this not a surprise.
Quite a pleasant surprise :) I dreamed about this 5 days ago... > > Not done, music and demos displayed on three LCD monitors were running under > Ubuntu (not Windows, as usual). > > Last but not least they had a very nice looking mini-PC (SingPC) with a > small and thin case, using a dualcore Atom at 1.6 Ghz and OEM pre-installed > with Asianux ! It sells at 4.5 MVND with a 16? wide LCD monitor included, > which is a very very acceptable price when you look at the quality of the > case (small casing is more expensive that normal cases). For an everyday > computing use it would be an awesome choice IIRC, an atom computer (monitor not included) cost about 200$ ~= 3.7M VND (man, now how can I pay back my debt?!), so it is a good price, indeed. >> especially that as it runs GNU/Linux you could surely install the >> preferred distribution of your choice ! > Be careful here: seeing a computer running some Linux distro is a good > sign of compatibility but still doesn't warrant it will be able to run > _any_ Linux distro. > > There could be some proprietary drivers specific to that distro which > may not be available with yours. I have already seen such case with > drivers only available for RedHat kernels but not for others, or > available for multiple distro but only for one (or a few) kernel > versions => you won't be able to apply kernel security upgrade or you'll > loose this driver's functionality. > > The only way to be sure is to try with a LiveCD, preferably before > buying it! ;-) Well, most Linux distros can and will runs fine without any trouble on those atom computers. > I think these are very strong signals of the beginning success of GNU/Linux > on the end-user market in general, and the Vietnamese one in particuler. > Latest GNU/Linux distributions, like Ubuntu 9.04 are now so easy to install > (provided the hardware is comptaible) and to use in Vietnamese that I am not > so surprised by this course of event. But I'm surprised it's coming rather > quicker than expected. I was waken up before seeing the later part of my dream. But yeah, this is a good beginning. >> I think that such commercial initiatives should be encouraged and if I >> had to buy computer parts or assembled computers, I for sure will give >> a priority to such a store, as prices are not higher than anywhere else. > Same for me! Then someone should compose a list of Linux friendly computer stores in HN/VN then? -- My job: Writing buggy softwares to make the world a worse place for humanity ( ???)???????????? ? / ?/ ?
